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Stephen Hawking

2018
Physicist · Cosmologist · Author
Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8, 1942. His parents’ house was in north London but, during the second world war, Oxford was considered a safer place to raise their children. When he was eight, his family moved to St. Albans, about 20 miles north of London. Three years later, Stephen went to St. Albans School, following in 1959 by his acceptance at University College, Oxford (his father’s alma mater). He wanted to study mathematics, which was not available at University College, so he pursued physics (which included mathematics). After three years and not very much work, he was awarded a first class honors degree in natural science.
Stephen’s next step found him at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge where he took up research in cosmology.
In 1963, he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), with a supposed life expectancy of three years or less. The onset of ALS is usually very much later than his then-youthful 21. He was to survive another 55 years, wheelchair-bound and eventually paralyzed, but able to enjoy his family, which included three children and three grandchildren. For a while, he was able to speak. However, during a visit to the CERN laboratory (home of the Large Hadron Collider) on the Franco-Swiss border, his voice succumbed permanently to a bout of pneumonia. Thanks to Intel, he was provided with a raspy synthetic voice device and a means to operate it. It could have been replaced by any of today’s realistic voice options, but he preferred to stay with the voice that had become familiar to millions of people including, occasionally, the cast of “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS.
After gaining his PhD in 1965 with his thesis, “Properties of Expanding Universes,” he became, first, a research fellow then Fellow for Distinction in Science at Gonville and Caius college. In 1966 he won the Adams Prize for his essay “Singularities and the Geometry of Space-time.” Stephen moved to the Institute of Astronomy in 1968, later moving back to DAMTP (1973), where he worked as a research assistant and published his first academic book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, with George Ellis.
Zora Neale Hurston was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the giants amongst Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, and Ethel Waters. Zora published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays.
In 1988, he told Der Spiegel magazine:
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
On the conflict between science and religion, in an interview with Diane Sawyer (ABC News) in June of 2010, he said:
"There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works."
Towards the end of his life, Professor Hawking was working with colleagues on a possible resolution to the black hole information paradox, where debate centers on the conservation of information. He maintained a program of travel and public lectures. And thanks to the Zero-G Corporation, he experienced weightlessness in 2007.
In the same interview with Sawyer, Hawking gave this advice to his children:
"One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away."